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Editorial of Andrea Riccardi

Dear friends of the website santegidio.org,
I am glad to present this new layout of the Community of Sant’Egidio’s website today, on 7th February 2018, its 50th anniversary. By navigating it, you will notice a number of novelties. First of all its new look: a complete overhaul with larger and clearer photos, accompanied by the logo, renovated in its style, yet retaining the same symbols that make it what it is: the dove, the olive branch, the rainbow from the Bible. The contents of the website are now more accessible, and it is all more integrated with social networks: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram.

The insights on the various aspects of the Community’s life and on its friendship with the poor have been renewed and updated to what Sant’Egidio is today. And I would like to note one of the most relevant innovations: it is now possible to access the evening prayer of the Community inside the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere. It will actually be possible to physically enter the Basilica and participate to the prayer: the connection will no longer be only audio, it will be video as well, enabling an improved and more direct participation to one of the most crucial moments in the Community’s life.

The website was conceived to make the life of the Community visible, in its various aspects and multiple expressions, since they now draw from all continents. It is a beautiful way to unify the world and show that a universal fraternity including everyone and overcoming all kinds of walls is possible. It is also an absolutely special cultural instrument, because it receives information, news, thoughts, ideas, from all over the world. I mean a culture that unites, and not divides, a culture that listens to the peripheries and those who dwell in them, revealing unfamiliar scenarios and involving attentiveness, dialogue, solidarity, and friendship.

Finally, I believe the renewed website is an instrument of friendship, for all those who enter it, in whichever way they do; for all those who take part, in their own unique way, in the life, dreams and hopes of the Community, which “set for itself no boundary, except charity” as Saint John Paul II used to say. I would like to offer one last word of thanks, to those who endeavoured to achieve this result, and who do so every day with competence, passion, and dedication, in order for this instrument to be always updated and ready to respond with care and spiritual keenness to the needs of its readers and users.